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Self-publishing used to be largely a vanity thing.
You'd plunk down around $10,000 and a book would pop out. Friends
and family were the primary target, although a lucky few actually
managed to find distributors and large readerships.
ePublishing has dramatically lowered the costs of publishing,
distributing and buying books, triggering a revolution at least as
profound as that roiling the music business...
...We've been printing on paper since around 1439, the year when
Johannes Gutenberg started using movable type. By 2039, I'll wager
that books published on paper will be as relevant to most people as
CDs are today.
Bookstores, to the extent they survive, will be boutiques that sell
a lot more than books, just as Amazon does today. Don't worry: the
cafes will survive.
Take a look at this recent Wall Street Journal article, "Cheap
E-Books Upend the Charts" (http://on.wsj.com/k5If0o)...
...Of the top 50 Amazon best-sellers, 15 were books priced at $5 or
less, according to the Journal. Louisville businessman and part-time
thriller writer John Locke, whose CIA thrillers sell for 99 cents,
accounted for seven of them.
That compares with the big publishers, who sell their books for
$9.99 and up on Amazon and generally give authors miniscule
royalties. Locke gets 35 cents from Amazon for his books, and he
claims to have income in March of $126,000.
For writers, this is good and bad news. The good news is that
authors can now choose to bypass publishing gatekeepers who often
judge a book's merit solely on how well it sells, and who cut most
authors only a tiny piece of the revenue stream. Like Locke, some
authors will make a fortune.
The bad news is that self-publishing without proper promotion is
generally about as successful as putting a book in a closet and
closing the door. And, of course, if you write a book that stinks,
no amount of promotion will help.
South Korea plans to convert all textbooks to
digital, swap backpacks for tablets by 2015
By Zach
Honig  posted Jul
3rd 2011 6:39AM
Book industry refuses to pay royalties to
Apple
By Dean
Wilson
Tue Jul 26 2011, 12:04
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Meet the publishing future: The most straightforward and
inexpensive way to become a recognized author. Vanity writers
not welcome.
eLitterati is
a new book-agent and publishing paradigm. The old ivory-tower
approach of book agents and corporate publishers are no longer
realistic: eBook sales in April 2010 totaled $28 million and in
April 2011 came to $72 million; Borders filed chapter 11 in
2010; and in May 2011 Amazon sold more eBooks than paperbacks
and hardcovers combined.
The phenomenal surge of eBooks will continue, making the demise
of VHS movies look sluggish. My prediction is that in ten years
printed books will be relegated to coffee-tables and pre-school
classrooms. Good news, but there’s a major drawback:
The advent of self-publishing and vanity publishing — not
that these forms of publishing are necessarily bad thing;
however, there are a lot of badly edited and badly written books
that have not been vetted for public consumption. The stigma of
abysmal self-published eBooks automatically taints even the
excellent works.
The majority of reviewers and buying public only feel safe when
purchasing eBooks that originate from respected publishing
houses or known authors. However, these traditional publishing
houses (gatekeepers of quality) are disappearing.
This is where eLitterati LLC fits in. We provide vetting,
editing, cover design, formatting & ePublishing, marketing and
the all-important recognition of quality. We do all of this for
a commission*
(approximately 20%) on the sales of your book. If agencies in
the past could make money on commission basis, then we can too.
You will not find anything better. If you make no money, we get
none. The eLitterati logo will appear in the left-bottom
corner of the eBook cover, providing instant recognition to
readers. This means that our quality can be no less than what
the public expects from the publishers of old. If you feel that
this is a rip-off then please go to our Self-publishing section
where we give advice and links on how to do it yourself.
Yes, we do reject manuscripts — many,
many manuscripts. We expect an eBook carrying our logo to be a
seller; that is to the authors' benefit and the only way we can
make a return on our investment.
Welcome to the future!
*eLitterati believes
in full disclosure. Please go to The
Royalties
section for the commission details.
 The
AAP released their monthly sales figures today for May
2011. It took a little number crunching, but it looks
like ebooks are up significantly over April 2011.
For some reason the AAP decided to hide the specific
figures for May, but I dug up the older numbers and did
the math myself. Year-to-Date sales were $389.7M, which
doesn’t really tell you much besides the fact that it’s
a big increase (160%) over the first 5 months of last
year ($389.7m vs $149.8m).
but when you subtract the first 4 months
($72.8m+69+90.3+69.9, April- January), you’ll find that
the actual May ebook sales were $87.7
million, and that’s a significant increase over
April ($72.8m).
And this occurred in a shrinking print market ($2967.5
Million vs $3128.4M, -5.1%), which makes the ebook
figures that much more impressive.
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eLitterati Bares
All
For our prospective authors,
eLitterati has added a web page to disclose exactly how our
commission structure works (see
Royalties). Any ePublisher/Agent/Editor that does not
make the financial obligations clear probably has something
to hide.
Additionally, for those brave souls who
wish to go the
self-publishing route, we have added a page dedicated to
make your ePublishing easier; with advice and links that we
have gleaned during our time as ePublishers.
Why advertise how to DIY ePublish? The
ePublishing we do for our clients is just a nice extra we
throw in. eLitterati’s real effort is the time we put into vetting, editing,
re-editing, formatting, proofreading etc. The actual
publishing is not hard – we have it down pat.
Amazon unveiled a Kindle
Textbook Rental, giving students the ability to rent
instead of buy digital textbooks. Amazon says that, "tens of
thousands" of titles from some of the major textbook
publishers - including John WIley & Sons, Wlsevier, and
Taylor & Francis - will be available for this school year.
It's not just the selection that the company is touting, of
course, it's the savings: "now students can save up to 80%
off its textbook list prices by renting from the Kindle
Store." Amazon's boasted savings for students has put the
company at odds with brick-and-mortar college bookstores,
and the National Association of College Stores has
accused the
online retailer of misleading students about the potential
for savings when buying textbooks from Amazon.
The Kindle Textbook Rental program also lets students
configure the length of the rental, from 30 days to 360
days. Of course, the longer you rent, the more expensive it
becomes. A $100 Kindle purchase can be rented for $40 for a
month, but that quickly increases the longer you keep the
book - and most students will keep it for at least a
semester. It's still cheaper to buy used textbooks in most
cases, and when you buy a physical book, of course, you can
keep the book or sell it back as you deem fit
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